May 12, 2009

Second Time Around

I had very mixed feelings after the first time I made a birdie sling. There were aspects of the construction that bothered me but I ended up loving the resulting bag. Well, love conquers all and I made another.

As luck would have it I learned something from my previous experience and this bag went together much more smoothly. First off, when my local Joann store was out of Pellon SF-101 fusible interfacing before my idea of a suitable replacement was way off base. This time around they had plenty in stock and using SF-101 made a huge difference in the feel of the final bag. Now I know Craft-fuse is bad, SF-101 is good.

Secondly, in my copy of the pattern the illustration showing the attachment of the bands to the panels is incorrect. The band is actually shown upside-down which is why on my original bag I spent a lot of time ripping the bands apart. Luckily, I had found the errata on the web before I started this bag. I also pinned like crazy to make sure the band and panel fit well before sewing. And somehow over the last 10 months I managed to improve my skills at attaching three points with a curved line and ended up with 4 gussets that were nearly identical. Pretty impressive!

I don’t know how much time I spent on the bag in total but I know it was less than before. It was mostly little bits here and there over the course of a week or so. I do know I didn't want to throw the entire project out the window like last summer. I think that may be the most impressive part.